"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Charles Hammond, 1821

Keeping Our Heads in the Sand After Boston
IPT News
May 14, 2013
http://www.investigativeproject.org/4016/keeping-our-heads-in-the-sand-after-boston
e:   

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The Obama administration's policy banning references to "Islamic extremism" and "jihad" in discussions about terrorism drew criticism during last Thursday's House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings.

The bombings "should again teach us that the enemy we face is violent Islamist extremism, not just al Qaida," said former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. "Osama bin Laden is dead. And the remaining leadership of al Qaida is on the run, but the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is rapidly spreading."

The Boston investigation already has shown that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev "adopted the outrageously false narrative of violent Islamist extremism, that Islam and America are involved in a struggle to the death with each other," Lieberman said.

It has been more than five years since the Department of Homeland Security, under the Bush administration, issued a directive about "the difficult terrain of terminology" as recommended by unidentified academics and Muslim American activists. "Jihadist" and "Islamist terrorist" were identified as terms to be avoided. Jihad "glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe," the memo said.

By identifying them as mere extremists or criminals, they lose some of the luster that attracts recruits, the argument goes.

Is it working? How can you tell?

Anecdotally, this strategy did nothing to dissuade the Tsarnaevs, or any of the other homegrown terrorist plotters in recent years. The policy's effectiveness is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. But skeptics, such as Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program Director Jeffrey M. Bale, say the language policy is illogical.

"Why, after all, would Muslims look to non-Muslims to interpret their religion for them, or for guidance about how to identify and label Islamists?" Bale said in response to an email from the Investigative Project on Terrorism. "Indeed, if we call jihadists 'criminals,' it may actually have the counterproductive effect of garnering more sympathy for them given the levels of anti-U.S. and anti-Western hostility throughout the Muslim world."

Jihadists routinely make it plain that – while religion may not be the sole factor driving them to violence – their Islamic beliefs and identities dominate their thinking. "We in the West just don't seem to want to believe what they constantly say," Bale wrote. (Read his full response here.)

Faisal Shahzad failed to set off the car bomb he built and parked near Times Square in 2010. But he said he tried to kill Americans because he saw himself as part of "the war against people who believe in the book of Allah and follow the commandments, so this is a war against Allah. So let's see how you can defeat your Creator, which you can never do. Therefore, the defeat of U.S. is imminent and will happen in the near future, inshallah [God willing], which will only give rise to much awaited Muslim caliphate, which is the only true world order."

Farooque Ahmed similarly thought he was acting to defend Muslims when he plotted to attack subway stops along Washington's Metro.

FBI agents were drawn to Ahmed after he tried to make contact with terrorist groups so he could wage jihad against Americans. At Ahmed's sentencing, public defender Kenneth Troccoli explained that Ahmed's extreme religious beliefs helped land him in front of the court.

"First, there's an incessant message that is delivered by radical followers of Islam that one cannot be true to the faith unless they take action, including violent action, most especially violent action. And this is a message which of course the United States combats in many different fronts," Troccoli said. "But [it] is an incessant message nonetheless that for a person like Mr. Ahmed who is a believer in Islam and is a Muslim, he hears all the time that he is not -- not only is he not sufficient under the faith, if one were to believe these negative messages, but he's also not patriotic because he was born and raised until he was 16 in Pakistan."

Ahmed bought the message offered by American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, among others, that Muslims who do not wage jihad, "literally will not find salvation under their faith."

The problem is especially acute for converts, a study by the Henry Jackson Society found. They were involved in nearly a quarter of the 171 al-Qaida related offenses in the United States since 1997.

Zachary Chesser wanted to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab not long after converting to Islam. Chesser is serving 25 years in prison for trying to provide material support to al-Shabaab and for his role in threatening the producers of "South Park" following an episode portraying the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. The producers wanted to show that Islam is the only major religion which prompts violent reactions to any criticism or mockery.

His case generated a bipartisan report on online radicalization by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. In a handwritten letter from prison, Chesser told committee staffers that, "My religion, the state of affairs in the Muslim world and a desire to alleviate suffering within it led me to desire to fight jihad."

Muslims investigating their faith find two choices, he wrote, "do nothing and pray or fight jihad somewhere. Increasingly, 'somewhere' is here. One does not typically run across the fiqh [jurisprudence] of diplomacy and negotiations unless to go into great depth."

"The one who sets out to learn inevitably sees jihad as viable and preferable at some point," Chesser wrote.

Rather than merely ignoring Chesser's path to radicalization, and his language, a counter-narrative is needed to rebut the narrative put forth by al-Qaida, Awlaki and other religious scholars that are readily accessible on the Internet. There are heroic efforts made by individual Muslims. But it is here that the government policy, stoked by national Islamist groups (see sidebar), proves woefully misguided.

During an appearance on CNN after the Marathon bombing, former radical Islamist Maajid Nawaz advocated "challenging the jihadist ideology, discrediting their propaganda." Ask someone to identify the symbols and leaders representing radical Islam, and "[y]ou'd think of the black flags, you'd think of the leaders such as bin Laden, Awlaki, Ayman Zawahiri. If I asked the same question for leaders and symbols of democratic activism in the Middle East today, we're much harder pressed to think of those leaders and symbols. And that tells us something about the power of the radical Islamist brand today versus the power of the democratic brand. And that's what we should really be focusing on."

But you can't counter narratives when you refuse to acknowledge their existence. That's what the current policy does.

In a separate CNN appearance, Nawaz said Muslim jihadists see America as the true enemy in a global war. "The younger [Tsarnaev] brother, let's remember, said in his interview that he was fighting on behalf of the Afghans and the Iraqis. He's probably never visited those two countries. Yet somehow, he felt that he owed more allegiance to Iraq and Afghanistan than to the very country that adopted him," Nawaz said.

The American-Islamic Forum for Democracy has launched a Muslim Liberty Project aimed at promoting patriotism as compatible with faith, rather than promoting the notion of a universal "ummah," or Muslim nation. The 2008 DHS directive on language frowns upon use of the word "liberty," saying that "many around the world would discount the term as a buzzword for American hegemony.

Forum founder Zuhdi Jasser said national Islamist groups have failed to lead on the issue.

"And that many of the leadership in our community says, oh, there's no problem. These guys weren't even really Muslims. We don't have the narrative about victimization, America's biggest, America's anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, they're killing Muslims abroad. They're in Muslim lands," Jasser said. "This narrative is not balanced by other Muslim leaders, the reformists that are anti-Islamist that believe in American liberty, and that imbalance creates a narrative that makes them feel that this society is not theirs, that they're visitors."

Jasser is a devout Muslim working to elbow his way into the discussion about Islam in America. When Islamist groups like CAIR or the Muslim Public Affairs Council – which are used to controlling the microphone – cannot argue against the merits of Jasser's message, they quickly turn to vicious ad hominem attacks.

A look at the home pages for CAIR, MPAC, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society and others shows plenty of blanket condemnations of the Boston attacks and statements that they do not represent Muslims. But no one has produced a detailed rebuttal to the ubiquitous online rhetoric that radicalized the Tsarnaevs and dozens of other young people.

In a recent column, Canadian physician and writer Ali A. Rizvi, an atheist who left Islam, criticized what he called "the 'anything but jihad' brigade" which wants to consider every possible motivation for the Boston attacks and a disrupted terror plot in Canada, except for religious radicalism, despite what Tsarnaev told investigators.
If terrorists say they were motivated by their interpretation of Islam, it should be openly discussed, Rizvi wrote. Doing so is not an indictment of all Muslims any more than saying "smoking is bad" is the same as saying "all smokers are bad."

"Timothy McVeigh (also a terrorist by any definition of the word) didn't yell 'Jesus is great!' before carrying out the Oklahoma City bombing," Rizvi wrote. "His brand of terrorism wasn't linked to Christianity, because it wasn't carried out in the name of it. (In contrast, the bombing of abortion clinics is terrorism universally acknowledged as being linked with Christian religious extremism.)"

Radical rhetoric is not shunned when it comes to other forms of political violence. When Jared Laughner killed six people and wounded 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in January 2011, media attention immediately turned to a political ad that featured crosshairs over various congressional districts, including Giffords'. Subsequent investigation, however, failed to turn up any political motivation for Laughner's madness.

Similarly, when some Tea Party rallies drew people carrying arms, talking heads expressed concern that it posed an inherent risk of violence.

Nobody tried to stifle those debates and, if they had merit, they would have been vigorously pursued. It should be no different when Muslims pursue political violence which they say is in furtherance of their religious beliefs.

It's time to review the policy on politically correct language.

The Church of Scotland's Scandal
Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Earlier this month, the Church of Scotland issued a report titled "The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the 'Promised Land.'"

The essence of the report is that according to the Bible, Jews have no more attachment to the land of Israel than anyone else. Hence "promised land" is in quotation marks in the report's title -- because there is no promised land.

In the report's words: "The New Testament contains a radical re-interpretation of the concepts of 'Israel,' 'temple,' 'Jerusalem' and 'land.' When the Bible mentions 'Israel,' it does not mean Israel; when it says 'temple,' the Bible does not mean the Jewish temple; 'Jerusalem' does not mean the city of Jerusalem; and 'land' does not mean land.

"Promises about the land of Israel," the report continues, "were never intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory."

Even during the worst excesses of Christian anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages, it is doubtful that any normative Christian body declared that "Israel," "the temple," "Jerusalem" and "the land" no longer meant or were ever intended to mean what those words represent.

This claim is not only profoundly anti-Semitic. It is an act of theological forgery; it makes a mockery of the Bible as a coherent document and it renders Christianity inherently anti-Semitic.

It would be as if a major post-Christian religious body had announced that "Jesus," "Christ," "crucifixion" and "resurrection" had never meant what Christians and the New Testament had always understood them to mean. Imagine if a major Muslim body declared that Jesus means Muhammad; Christ means Quran; crucifixion means Islamophobia; and resurrection means the Hajj.

I have never equated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. But the Church of Scotland report is not about criticism of Israel; it is about invalidating the Jewish people and invalidating the Jews' historically incontestable claims to the land upon which the only independent states that ever existed were Jewish.

--The Church of Scotland report asserts that the Bible does not support the existence of a Jewish state: "There has been a widespread assumption by many Christians as well as many Jewish people that the Bible supports an essentially Jewish state of Israel. This raises an increasing number of difficulties. ... "

--It asserts that justice and the existence of a Jewish state are mutually exclusive: "There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land."

--It asserts that the Jews' return to Israel has no biblical basis.

--It asserts that the notion that the Jews have or ever had a special relationship with God -- one of the most oft repeated ideas in the Hebrew Bible -- is negated in that very same Bible: "That exclusivist tradition implied Jews had a special, privileged position in relation to God. But the prophetic tradition stood against this." The Chosen People is not chosen, in other words.

--It asserts that God's promise of the land to Abraham has nothing to do with the Jews; it is only about Jesus: "The promise to Abraham about land is fulfilled through the impact of Jesus, not by restoration of land to the Jewish people."

--It asserts that even Jesus -- that proud, religious Jew -- did not believe in any special relationship between God and the Jews: "Jesus offered a radical critique of Jewish specialness ... "

At the same time, this truly immoral document does not devote a word to why there were Palestinian refugees: While the Jews accepted the 1947-48 partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, all the neighboring Arab states rejected the partition and invaded the Jews in order to annihilate Israel at birth.

Nor does the report devote a single sentence to how Israel's occupation of the West Bank came about: In 1967, Israel's neighbors sought to exterminate Israel just as Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and most Palestinians and other Muslims in the Middle East today wish to now. And that only because of that war, won by Israel, did Israel come to occupy the West Bank of Jordan.

Nor is a word devoted to Palestinian national honoring of their numerous terrorists, or to the exterminationist and anti-Semitic propaganda that saturates Middle East media or to the widespread Palestinian support for terrorism (according to the just-released Pew Forum poll of Muslims, 40 percent of Palestinians support suicide terror).

And the Church of Scotland did not think it important to even hint at what happened in Gaza after the Israelis gave the whole of Gaza to the Palestinians: The Palestinians converted it into a terror-state that regularly launches rockets into Israel to kill as many Israelis as possible.

And, most vile of all, the Church of Scotland never once notes, let alone condemns, the Muslim countries and organizations that seek to annihilate Israel, an existential threat that no other country or people in the world face.

The Church of Scotland has given voice to the ugliest depiction of Jews since medieval times. The official reaction of the Scottish Jewish community is that Christian-Jewish post-Holocaust dialogue seems to have been a moral and intellectual waste of time. I do not agree. But if other Christian churches do not condemn the Church of Scotland -- despite its promise to revise its report to include a statement that Israel has a right to exist (!) -- even pro-Christian Jews will wonder whether the Scottish Jewish community's reaction is valid.

And how did this happen? The report is a combination of medieval Christian anti-Judaism and contemporary leftist anti-Zionism. For Jews and Israel, that's a lethal combination.

Once again GM brings his strong google fu skills to finding for us particularly pertinent information.

Second post of the day:

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/14/

By MATTHEW DOLAN

DETROIT—A man with a Saudi Arabian passport will be held in custody until a hearing Tuesday after customs agents charged him with lying about a pressure cooker found in his luggage.

Hussain Al Khawahir, 33 years old, appeared briefly in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon, but his detention hearing was postponed until Tuesday. He didn't enter a plea, according to officials.

"Although we never want to jump to conclusions, we also have a duty to conduct an appropriate investigation to protect the public," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade for the Eastern District of Michigan said in a statement provided by her office.

The case involving a pressure cooker comes almost one month after two men allegedly used pressure cookers in bombings that killed three people and injured dozens of others during the Boston Marathon in April. It was unclear Monday whether federal authorities in Detroit believe the case of the Saudi national is terrorism-related.

Mr. Al Khawahir landed Saturday at Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on a flight that came via Amsterdam, according to charging documents dated Sunday. He told officials he flew to the U.S. to visit his nephew, a student at the University of Toledo.

Customs agents noticed that the man's passport was missing a page. Mr. Al Khawahir said he didn't know how that happened since the passport had been locked in a box in his home where only he, his wife and two children had access, according to the charging documents.

In his luggage, authorities said, was a pressure cooker. He initially told agents the cooker was for his nephew because pressure cookers weren't sold in the U.S., according to court documents. "The Defendant then changed his story and admitted his nephew had purchased a pressure cooker in America before but it 'was cheap' and broke after the first use," the customs officer wrote in her affidavit filed in federal court.

At that point, Mr. Al Khawahir was read his Miranda rights and invoked his right to remain silent, according to authorities.

The Associated Press reported that in an interview, the suspect's nephew, identified as Nasser Almarzooq, said he had asked his uncle to bring him a pressure cooker because the ones he bought in the U.S. didn't work.

On Monday afternoon, Mr. Al Khawahir appeared before Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen, who ordered the case continued until Tuesday. The assistant U.S. Attorney handling the case, Jonathan Turkel, is the same prosecutor who tried the case against the so-called Christmas Day underwear bomber convicted of trying to blow up a commercial airliner over the Detroit area in 2009.

Mexico, Where Teachers Take Hostages
President Enrique Peña Nieto needs to show the country that he will defend the rule of law.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Mexican students studying to be teachers released a hostage on Wednesday—in the municipality of Nahuatzen—due to concerns about his health. But they continue to hold five others. The students are supported by the Michoacán State Teachers Organization, which warned that the remaining captives, who are state policemen, would be freed only when a demand for 1,200 new teaching jobs is met.
Related Video

WSJ's "Americas" columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady talks with James Freeman about the tension between teachers unions in Mexico and newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto. Photo: Associated Press.

The Mexican standoff, now a week old, is only the latest example of a teacher-union rebellion against recent amendments to the Mexican constitution aimed at improving public education.

Institutional Revolutionary Party President Enrique Peña Nieto has made it a priority to fix the broken public-education system. But eager reformers are often tested by politically powerful interests in their first year in office. The teachers believe they can make him back down.

Over the 71 consecutive years that the PRI ruled Mexico until 2000, it earned a reputation for heavy-handedness bordering on repression. Now that it is finally back in power, there is pressure on Mr. Peña Nieto to show that his party is kinder and gentler. This may tempt him to tolerate union violence. But the recent constitutional amendments increase transparency and accountability and depoliticize education. This is the change the PRI needs to show the public it supports.

It's easy to see why teachers are up in arms over the amendments. For the first time ever they will be vetted in a comprehensive process that includes proficiency exams. Lifetime tenure will no longer be guaranteed from the day a teacher graduates from a teaching college. Teachers will not be allowed to pass their tenured posts to relatives, the prevalent practice of selling a teaching post will be outlawed, and promotions will require evaluation. In short, teaching is to be like a real job, where performance matters.

Accountability is a foreign concept for many who go into teaching, which explains why teaching students are part of the rebellion. In April, violence broke out in Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero, when the state legislature refused a request by activists to reject the new evaluation process. Union thugs vandalized property. They also blocked the highway that runs from Mexico City, through Chilpancingo, to Acapulco, with serious economic consequences. Most teachers unions at least pretend to care about their students. Many striking teachers in Mexico just walked off the job, leaving children and parents in the lurch.

Mr. Peña Nieto is leading a nation that long ago outgrew the labor laws that govern teaching. When the North American Free Trade Agreement was born in 1994, many expected Mexico to use it to become a magnet for low-skill, low-tech industries. But openness raises living standards, and destinations outside of Nafta soon became more attractive for investors seeking low-wage labor.

Mexico naturally moved up the food chain. Today it increasingly hosts middle- and high-tech industries, including aerospace. According to the ministry of the economy, "There are over 190 companies within the aerospace industry operating in Mexico, employing nearly 30,000 workers" and the aerospace market is undergoing "rapid growth."

Will Mexico have the human capital needed for that growth and the other economic changes that will accompany it? The education ministry claims that every year 90,000 Mexicans complete graduate programs in engineering and technology. But the public-education system could hold the country back.

In very poor countries, access to education is the first hurdle to clear. But step two, which Mexico now faces, is the quality challenge. Claudio X. González, president of Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First), a nongovernmental organization, is working to build public support for reform. He says "only one quarter of each generation finishes high school," and only "10% finish their college degree." What is more, "up to 80% of each generation fails or barely passes international tests in reading comprehension, math and science."

Mexico ranks 34th out of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in basic education achievement. Mexicanos Primero reports that Guerrero, Oaxaca and Michoácan, where much of the union violence has taken place, have the nation's worst secondary-education outcomes.

Notes Mr. González: "No country in the OECD spends as much on education, as a percentage of GDP, as Mexico. Still, we have no reliable registry of teachers and close to 160,000 people [are paid] a salary as teachers but never step into a classroom."

Mexico's elected representatives have voted to reform a corporatist education model built in the 1930s. Now the state is charged with enforcing the change. It should also prosecute vandals and kidnappers. If it does, it won't only defend the interest of millions of children but it will also be a step closer to implementing the rule of law in a country where it is sorely lacking.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

By GARRY KASPAROV

When Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow on Tuesday to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, the announced list of topics included finding "common ground" on Syria. It also mentioned antiterror cooperation in light of the Russian origins of Boston Marathon bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers. It is very unlikely Mr. Kerry found common ground on either subject.

The humanitarian catastrophe in Syria is of no concern to Mr. Putin, as is clear from the Kremlin's support for the murderous Assad regime. Mr. Putin also seeks to stoke the instability that helps keep the price of oil high. The similar pattern of Russian interference in Iran and Venezuela is no coincidence. Energy revenue is what keeps Mr. Putin and his gang in power and therefore oil prices are always his top priority.

Terror would seem to be a more likely area for U.S.-Russian collaboration, especially regarding the virulent brand of Islamist extremism that has been bubbling over in Russia's southwestern Caucasus region since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet the Kremlin's cooperation on the Islamist threat has been remarkably selective.

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Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waits for Russia's President Vladimir Putin before their meeting in Moscow on Tuesday.

Soon after the suspects' names in the Boston bombing became known, the Russian security services announced that they had warned the FBI about the elder Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, in 2011. But what about during and after Tamerlan's visit to Russia's North Caucasus in 2012? That's when he reportedly was indoctrinated and trained by radicals in Dagestan.

Why were there no communications in 2012 from the FSB (the successor of the KGB) about a suspected radical, an American no less, training in the hottest of Caucasus terrorist hotbeds and then returning to the U. S.? It is beyond belief that the extensive police state that monitors every utterance of the Russian opposition could lose track of an American associating with terrorists.

Tamerlan reportedly met with Makhmud Mansur Nidal, a known terror recruiter, and William Plotkin, a Russian-Canadian jihadist. Both men were killed in Dagestan by the Russian military just days before Tamerlan left Russia for the U.S. If no intelligence was sent from Moscow to Washington, all this talk of FSB cooperation cannot be taken seriously.

This would not be the first time Russian security forces seemed strangely impotent in the face of an impending terror attack. In the Nord-Ost theater siege by Islamist Chechens in 2002 and the Beslan school hostage attack by Chechen and other Islamist radicals in 2004, it later came to light that there were FSB informants in both terror groups—yet the attacks went ahead unimpeded. Beslan was quickly used by Mr. Putin to justify shredding the last vestiges of Russian democracy by eliminating the election of regional governors.

With such a track record, it is impossible to overlook that the Boston bombing took place just days after the U.S. Magnitsky List was published, creating the first serious external threat to the Putin power structure by penalizing Russian officials complicit in human-rights crimes. Practically before the smoke in Boston cleared, Mr. Putin was saying "I told you so" and calling for cooperation.

Secretary Kerry's visit validated every Putin instinct. The Russian president kept the American waiting in a hall for three hours—no doubt impressing Mr. Putin's cronies. On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry was allowed to meet with a small group of Russian human-rights activists whose activities have been under assault as the Putin government cracks down ever harder on free speech and all forms of opposition.

But the meeting avoided mention of the two most significant developments in Russian human rights: the Magnitsky List and the dozens of protesters arrested at a political protest in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow a year ago. Mr. Putin is creating a new generation of political prisoners, with show trials unseen since Joseph Stalin, and Mr. Kerry goes to Russia to find common ground? As for Syria, the day after Mr. Kerry left, the Journal reported that advanced Russian S-300 antiaircraft missiles were headed to Syria.

Islamist terror is a genuine threat that will continue to take Russian and American lives unless it is met with a strong response. But having a shared enemy does not mean having shared values. Respect for human life and individual rights are the most potent weapons the civilized world possesses and where any discussion of common ground must begin. The Putin regime's dubious record on counterterrorism and its continued support of terror sponsors Iran and Syria mean only one thing: common ground zero.

Mr. Kasparov, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is the leader of the Russian pro-democracy group United Civil Front and chairman of the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation.

We have missed you Obj, good to have you with us once again.

You raise well the points of the other side of the coin.

There are twol facets to this matter, which, given whose ox is begin gored, is likely to attract media attention:

1) First Amendment issues
2) National Security/Intel Issues

As I see things, there is an inherent tension here between the government having matters which are properly and necessarily to be kept secret and the fact that government uses that as a justification to declare "Secret!!!" on matters that are simply inconvenient.

I for one railed at the irresponsible and even unpatriotic disclosures during the Iraq War (e.g. that we were funding Iraqi journalists) and the Afpakia War (e.g. that we were tracking financial flows of AQ, that we were reading the geology of the rocks behind OBL when he released his videos as a way of trying to determine where he was).  OTOH I am all for the whistle-blowers helping the American people find out what really happened at Benghazi.

Here, initial reports read like AG Holder and his minions went well overboard.

That fleshes things out quite a bit GM.


Wonder why some of us are suspicious about Big Brother , , ,

http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/13/most-transparent-administration-in-histo

FWIW I don't answer the questions I don't want to answer.

The questions about race I answer by marking "other" and filling in the space with "human"

  About 20 years ago I had some bureau flunky knock on my door to chastise me for not answering all the questions.  I told her the ones I did not answer were none of the governments business and closed the door in her face.  That was the end of it.

It's Not That Bad Out There To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Bob Stein, CFA - Deputy Chief Economist
Date: 5/13/2013

Certain things, like the sun rising, or the tides shifting, can be counted on. It’s also true that when government shrinks as a share of GDP, things start to pick up.
For the past three years, gridlock in Washington has held total spending by the federal government basically flat. This means federal spending has fallen from more than 25% of GDP to 22%, creating more room for the private sector.
Contrary to popular Keynesian thinking, this means entrepreneurship will have a more pronounced, and positive, economic impact on the economy. In other words, the “end of the world” trade, which hasn’t really worked in the past four years is becoming more dangerous. We expect gold to fall, while bond yields, the dollar, and stock prices rise.
We don’t disagree with the angst of many over deficits and debt, but things are rapidly getting better. Tax revenues are up sharply and we are forecasting a budget deficit of about $725 billion, or 4.5% of GDP, this year. In 2014 and 2015, we expect deficits of near 3% and below 2%, respectively. This is not magic. It’s what happens when spending is contained.
It’s not that deficits matter all that much; but it’s a sign of how wrong the pessimists can be. And the same thing is happening in markets. The “smart guys” at hedge funds have been short the dollar and stocks, while long gold and bonds. But, in the past year, this trade has not worked.
And the fundamentals suggest this trade will continue to be a loser. We think stocks and growth are still underappreciated.
Gold is well above fair value. Comparing its value to oil, corn, copper, M2, nominal economic growth or even the monetary base suggests that it is worth somewhere between $800 and $1,100 an ounce today. We’re forecasting further declines in gold over the next 12 months. It probably won’t be a bloodbath, but it’s not the asset to be long.
The same goes for bonds. At the start of the year, we were forecasting a 10-year Treasury yield of 2.85% at year end. Historically, this would have been an outsized jump in yields, especially if the Fed does not move to tighten. A more sanguine forecast of 2.4% still means capital losses.
Even if you think the Fed won’t raise rates until 2015, yields are too low. If the Fed held short-term rates near zero for two years and then hiked them to 4% over the next two years and held them there, the average funds rate for the next decade would be 2.8%. Slap a premium of 0.5% on this for the 10-year Treasury and a yield of 3.3% is the result.
Meanwhile, despite a sharp increase in equity prices recently, the S&P 500 still has a generous earnings yield of 6%. Stocks are still cheap and we expect further increases. In other words, not letting the conventional wisdom get you down has been, and will continue to be, the profitable trade.

From whom is this communication?

"Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism." --French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

1) Oballah

2)   Oblahblah

======================

"In the wake of Benghazi, the country endured an intense debate over how much free speech we could afford because of the savage intolerance of rioters half a world away. Obama and Clinton fueled this debate by incessantly blaming the video -- as if the First Amendment was the problem. Clinton and Obama both swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. But after failing to support and defend Americans left to die, they blamed the Constitution for their failure. That's what difference it makes." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Some very interesting implications here.  If this piece is right, we had best learn its logic lest Obamacare receive credit to which it is not entitled.
========================

The Health Spending Decline
Why costs have been slowing, at least until ObamaCare kicks in.

To the surprise of both political parties and planners of all types, American health-care spending appears to be slowing down. The health growth rate has flattened out at about 3.9% over the last three years—a record low since the 1960s and down from the old normal of 6.2% to 9.7% in the 2000s.

This is rare good economic news, given that health cost growth sends federal entitlement spending soaring and erodes middle-class wage increases. Can this trend last? Maybe, though not with the Affordable Care Act looming to quash any progress.

At first most observers assumed the slowdown was temporary, an artifact of the 2007-2009 recession and weak recovery. As people lost jobs and thus their insurance, or simply had less income, health spending fell in tandem.

Reflecting this view, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Altarum Institute recently estimated that underlying economic conditions are responsible for 77% of the current health spending deceleration and that this dip will end when GDP rebounds. Yet health spending growth rates started to decline in 2002, and a provocative paper in the New England Journal last summer suggested that a robust moderation began in mid-2005.

Now comes new evidence that the moderation is durable, and that it is structural—the result of permanent changes in the health system itself rather than the business cycle. These papers look at the historical relationship between GDP and the share of the economy devoted to health care and were published last week in the journal Health Affairs.

The Harvard economist and sometime White House adviser David Cutler and Nikhil Sahni argue that the slowdown has been larger and longer than it should otherwise be. By their model, the recession explains only 37% of the slowdown, and other variables 8%, not Kaiser's 77%.

President Obama naturally says he deserves most of the credit for the slowdown, even though it began well before ObamaCare passed in 2010. His Council of Economic Advisers argues in its 2013 report to Congress that the economy explains just 18% and that the balance includes "early responses to the Affordable Care Act."

But the White House also says that everything that goes wrong in health care is still the fault of Republicans or of private insurers, even though the law was passed (with zero Republican votes) to end the industry's alleged abuses.

A more plausible explanation is offered by Michael Chernew and some Harvard colleagues. Their model suggests that market choice and competition helped produce the slowdown, especially among Mr. Obama's preferred villains. Hide the children: the insurers.

Dr. Chernew investigated changes in the insurance mix at large businesses from 2008 to 2011. Even as these firms did better than their smaller counterparts, their workers shared more of the costs of their own care through higher deductibles, co-pays and new benefit designs. "Rising out-of-pocket payments," he writes, "appear to have played a major role in this decline, accounting for approximately 20% of the observed slowdown."

In a word, patients make better decisions when they have the right incentives and information. Old-style first-dollar insurance coverage is declining in the private economy because employees prefer cash wages and employers can't afford to finance ever-more expensive benefits. One way commercial insurers have responded is with plans that steer consumers to higher-value hospitals, doctors and other providers in return for lower out-of-pocket costs. Think of the way drug formularies encourage generic pharmaceuticals over name brands.

Mr. Obama's economists speculate instead that regulations are requiring providers to be less inefficient, which would be the first time in history that is true. ObamaCare also outlaws most of the experimentation and innovation that is the most likely driver of the slowdown.

Large businesses that self-fund employee benefits operate mostly free of regulations and taxes under a law known as Erisa. Erisa plans cover 60% of the 149 million Americans with job-based coverage, up from 54% in 2005 and 49% in 2000 as businesses have fled government micromanagement.

But everyone else—Medicare, Medicaid and the individual and small-business insurance markets—is now under federal control, and many more will join them if ObamaCare inspires businesses to dump workers into its subsidized "exchanges." The law's actuarial rules and benefit mandates prohibit what the government defines as excessive cost sharing, even as trillions of dollars in subsidies will be pumped into the system to inflate spending growth again.

That will be terrible for the fisc—Dr. Cutler estimates entitlement spending will be $770 billion lower over a decade if the current slowdown holds—and it is another reminder of what a squandered opportunity "health-care reform" was. It increasingly looks as if ObamaCare passed amid a national correction in the health markets that no one in Congress or the White House understood, much less noticed, so naturally Washington moved to create new problems when the old ones were starting to fix themselves.

I just heard a rumor that Petraeus no longer feels the loyalty to Team Obama (can't blame him either!) and will be saying and doing things this week , , ,

===========================

"Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens's warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that '1.43 million cables come to my office' -- and she can't be expected to see all of them, or any. ... Are murdered ambassadors like those 1.43 million cables she doesn't read? Just too many of them to keep track of? No. Only six had been killed in the history of the republic -- seven, if you include Arnold Raphel, who perished in General Zia's somewhat mysterious plane crash in Pakistan in 1988. ... Hicks is now America's head man in the country, and the cabinet secretary to whom he reports says, 'Leave a message after the tone and I'll get back to you before the end of the week.' Just to underline the difference here: Libya's head of government calls [whistleblower Gregory] Hicks, but nobody who matters in his own government can be bothered to. ... A real government would be scrambling furiously to see what it could do to rescue its people. ... Chris Stevens was the poster boy for Obama's view of the Arab Spring; he agreed with the president on everything that mattered. The only difference is that he wasn't in Vegas but out there on the front line, where Obama's delusions meet reality. Stevens believed in those illusions enough to die for them. One cannot say the same about the hollow men and women in Washington who sent him out there unprotected, declined to lift a finger when he came under attack, and in the final indignity subordinated his sacrifice to their political needs by lying over his corpse." --National Review's Mark Steyn

False reports outpace sex assaults in the military
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/12/false-reports-outpace-sex-assaults-in-the-military/?page=all#pagebreak
By Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times
Sunday, May 12, 2013



False complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a faster rate than overall reports of sexual assault, a trend that could harm combat readiness, analysts say.

Virtually all media attention on a Pentagon report last week focused on an increase in service members’ claims of sexual abuse in an anonymous survey, but unmentioned were statistics showing that a significant percentage of such actually investigated cases were baseless.

From 2009 to 2012, the number of sexual abuse reports rose from 3,244 to 3,374 — a 4 percent increase.

During the same period, the number of what the Pentagon calls “unfounded allegations” based on completed investigations of those reports rose from 331 to 444 — a 35 percent increase.

In 2012, there were 2,661 completed investigations, meaning that the 444 false complaints accounted for about 17 percent of all closed cases last year. False reports accounted for about 13 percent of closed cases in 2009.

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and analyst at the Family Research Council, is writing a book for Regnery Publishing Inc. about the Pentagon’s push to put women in direct ground combat in the infantry, armor and special operations.

“In the course of conducting interviews with commanders, I heard time and again complaints about female service members making sex-related allegations which proved unfounded,” Mr. Maginnis said. “Not only do some women abuse the truth, but it also robs their commanders from more important, mission-related tasks.

“Female service members told me that some women invite problems which lead men on and then result in advances the woman can’t turn off. Too often, such female culpability leads to allegations of sexual contact, assault and then the women feign innocence.”

The annual Pentagon report on sexual assault noted the numbers of false complaints but included no analysis. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness, said the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office (SAPRO) is ignoring the problem of false reports.

“Unsubstantiated accusations remain a significant problem, but the SAPRO is doing nothing about it,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “I went through both volumes and found no evidence of concern about the significant 17 percent of ‘unfounded accusations.’ Something should be done to reduce the numbers of false accusations, the first step being an admission that the problem exists.”

The number of sex abuse reports has risen from 1,700 a decade ago to 3,374 last year.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed male and female personnel into close living conditions at a sprawling network of bases.

The existence of unwanted and wanted sexual contact in the war zone is not disputed.

For example, a group of Army physicians in 2010 studied one brigade combat team deployed to Iraq in 2007.

The physicians’ study, published in the Military Medicine journal, examined the number of soldiers who sustained disease or noncombat injuries. Of 4,122 soldiers, including 325 women in support roles, 1,324 had diseases or injuries that forced them to miss time or be evacuated.

“Females, compared with males, had a significantly increased incident-rate ratio for becoming a [disease or noncombat] casualty,” the doctors found.

Of 47 female soldiers evacuated from the brigade and sent home, 35 — or 74 percent — were for “pregnancy-related issues.”

Even before the wars, the Pentagon removed barriers across the board to women and took action to mix the sexes more closely. Men and women share dorms and barracks in boot camp and at the service academies, and deploy in close quarters on ships.

The integration promises to become even more intimate in coming years as the Pentagon places women into training for direct ground combat jobs.

“The latest SAPRO report confirms that problems of sexual assault against both men and women are getting worse, not better,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “Pentagon leaders nevertheless are planning to extend these problems into the combat arms. Congress and the Pentagon first must do no harm. At a minimum, the Obama administration must not be allowed to extend complicated issues of sexual assault, which have increased by 129 percent since 2004, into direct ground combat infantry battalions.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week announced several steps to eliminate assaults, including ordering commanders to conduct “visual inspections” of all workplaces to ensure they are “free from materials that create a degrading or offensive work environment.”

The Air Force completed such an inspection last year after a female service member complained of persistent harassment.

In January, the Air Force reported the “health and welfare” inspection results:

“The Air Force found 631 instances of pornography (magazines, calendars, pictures, videos that intentionally displayed nudity or depicted acts of sexual activity); 3,987 instances of unprofessional material (discrimination, professional appearance, items specific to local military history such as patches, coins, heritage rooms, log books, song books, etc.); and 27,598 instances of inappropriate or offensive items (suggestive items, magazines, posters, pictures, calendars, vulgarity, graffiti). In total, 32,216 items were reported. Identified items were documented and either removed or destroyed.”

Said Mr. Hagel: “We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

"Putting that view in a clear and concise way into the record is better than having no one express it."

Yes.

http://teapartyorg.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=4301673%3ATopic%3A1496560&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqtJrJ40Cio

This is over three hours long.  I am told it starts to really get traction at about 1:02:00

http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com...roof-majority/

Grateful for my wonderful mom!

"And my point is that there is more than a mere solitary sole (sic) on the Court who is a conservative is thus supported."   

With Obamacare being a tax, my understanding is that there is now a new basis for challenging the law-- it originated in the Senate, not the House.  We shall see , , ,

Scott Grannis responded to the Moby Ben piece by referencing this post on his blog last year--
see http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-fed-leverages-up_17.html for the charts:


Monday, December 17, 2012
The Fed leverages up
Ben Bernanke, head of the world's largest hedge fund (aka The Federal Reserve), last week announced that next year he plans to borrow another $1 trillion dollars—on top of the $1.5 trillion he's borrowed over the past four years—in order to fund the federal government's CY 2013 deficit and give his shareholders (aka taxpayers) a profit to boot. This plan is otherwise known as QE4.

His is a unique business, since he can force the market to lend him money—he simply buys what he wants and pays for it with his "bank reserve checkbook." By the end of next year, the Fed will own $1 trillion more bonds, and the banking system will have $1 trillion more reserves, whether it wants them or not. Bernanke can also dictate the rate at which he borrows money; for the foreseeable future that will be the rate the Fed decides to pay on reserve balances held at the Fed, currently 0.25%. Those who end up with the reserves will have essentially lent the Fed money on the Fed's terms.

To be more specific: Next year, Bernanke plans to make net purchases of $540 billion of longer-term Treasuries, and $480 billion of MBS. He will fund those purchases by issuing $1.02 trillion of newly-minted bank reserves. In effect, the Fed will be swapping reserves (which are functionally equivalent to 3-mo. T-bills, the paragon of risk-free assets, but which currently pay a slightly higher rate of interest) for bonds. Since money and bank reserves are fungible, Bernanke's planned purchases should effectively cover Treasury's deficit next year, which, perhaps not coincidentally, looks to be about $1 trillion.



It's important to note here that when the Fed issues $1 trillion of bank reserves, it is NOT "printing money." That's because bank reserves are not cash and they can't be spent anywhere: like pajamas, they are only for use "in house," since they are always kept at the Fed. Bank reserves do have a unique feature, of course, that other short-term assets don't: they can be used by banks to create new money, and in fact, acquiring more reserves is the only way that banks can increase their lending, because banks need reserves to back their deposits. Since banks now hold $1.6 trillion of reserves, of which only $0.1 trillion is required to back current deposits, banks already have an almost unlimited ability to make new loans and thereby expand the money supply. A year from now they will have an even more unlimited ability to do so.


That banks haven't yet engaged in a massive expansion of lending activity and the money supply is a testament only to the risk-averse nature of bank management and the risk-averse nature of the public, which now holds $6.5 trillion of bank savings deposits (up 64% in the past four years) paying almost nothing. As the above chart shows, in recent years the M2 measure of money supply has grown only slightly faster than its long-term average.

To put it another way: The Fed's massive provision of reserves to the banking system has not resulted in an equally large increase in inflation because the world's demand for money (cash, bank deposits, and cash equivalents like bank reserves and T-bills) has been very strong. Banks, in short, have been content to sit on $1.5 trillion of "excess" reserves because they worry that making more loans and increasing deposits might be a lot riskier.

The rationale for hedge funds is to exploit arbitrage opportunities, buying one thing and selling or borrowing another. Even small differences in prices can become lucrative, thanks to the use of lots of leverage. If done successfully, arbitrage can contribute to market efficiency, which in turn can contribute to the health of an economy. Whether the Fed will accomplish the same thing with QE4, however, is an open question. Will banks lend a lot more next year, even though they have an essentially unlimited capacity to lend today? Will increased bank lending fuel genuine economic growth, or will it just fuel more speculation? No one knows. We are in uncharted waters; what the Fed is doing today has never been done before.

When faced with issues of daunting complexity and with little or no guidance from the past, one can only begin by trying to reduce things to their simplest form. Here's what I think is a simplified description of what the Fed is planning: Next year the Fed will be purchasing a total of $1 trillion of 10-yr Treasuries and current coupon MBS. 10-yr Treasuries currently yield 1.75%, and current coupon MBS about 2.25%, so the Fed will earn roughly 2.0% on its purchases, while paying out 0.25% on the reserves it creates to buy those bonds, for a net spread of 1.75%. By the end of next year, the Fed will be raking in $17.5 billion per year in profits on their $1 trillion swap, and that will make the Fed the envy of all other hedge fund managers.

These profits, of course, are automatically remitted by the Fed to Treasury. Happily for taxpayers, those profits will completely offset Treasury's cost of borrowing, at least for the next several years. Here's the math, also in simplified form: First, let's assume that Treasury is funding its deficit with 7-yr Treasuries (that's a decent approximation, since last year they told us that they were going to lengthen the average maturity of outstanding Treasuries, which at the time was about six years). The yield on 7-yr Treasuries is currently about 1.25%, so Treasury will pay 1.25% on $1 trillion, and receive back from the Fed 1.75%, leaving a profit of about 0.5%, or $5 billion. Bottom line, we will all benefit from next year's deficit financing! (Note that the key to the profit is the Fed's decision to buy lots of MBS, which yield more than Treasuries of similar maturity.)

A real-world hedge fund attempting to do the same thing would run up against the reality of mark-to-market accounting rules. If interest rates on the bonds it buys rise, the mark-to-market losses on the bonds could easily wipe out the interest it's receiving, threaten margin calls and ultimately result in insolvency. For example, a 1 percentage point rise in the yield on 7-yr Treasuries would result in a 6.7% decline in their price, thereby wiping out over 5 years' worth of coupon payments. Mortgage-backed securities could fall in price by even more. A hedge fund would also be exposed to the risk that its borrowing costs could rise, thus narrowing or even eliminating the net interest spread it's earning.

Happily, Bernanke doesn't have to worry about any of this, since he doesn't have to mark his bonds to market, and he can keep his borrowing costs below the current yield on his portfolio for at least the next 2 or 3 years, given the FOMC's recent guidance (i.e., it won't start tightening until the unemployment rate falls to 6.5%, short-term inflation expectations exceed 2.5%, and/or long-term inflation expectations become unanchored). And of course, the Fed can always make the interest payments on its borrowings because its "bank reserve checkbook" is effectively bottomless.

If this all sounds too good to be true, it is. The Fed may not face the risks that a typical hedge fund does, but that doesn't mean the Fed is not taking on a huge amount of risk at taxpayers' and citizens' expense. Although the Fed need never face insolvency, if mark to market losses got really bad, they could lose their credibility and with that the value of the dollar could be seriously at risk. The Fed's losses might become direct obligations of Treasury, or they might be inflicted on taxpayers and citizens via the sinister "inflation tax." The Fed could eventually repay its borrowings with devalued dollars, leaving the rest of us with deflated balance sheets and deflated incomes. Meanwhile, by allowing Treasury to borrow trillions at no cost, the Fed is acting as an obstacle to badly needed deficit reduction.

Although it may seem paradoxical, the biggest risk we all face as a result of the Fed's unprecedented experiment in quantitative easing is the return of confidence and the decline of risk aversion. If there comes a time when banks no longer want to hold trillions of dollars worth of excess bank reserves for whatever reason (e.g., the interest rate the Fed is paying is no longer attractive, or the banks feel comfortable using their reserves to ramp up lending, or the public no longer wants to keep many of trillions of dollars in bank savings deposits), that is when things will get "interesting."

More confidence would mean less demand for cash and cash equivalents, and that in turn would mean that a virtual flood of money could try to exit banks (e.g., as people withdraw their savings deposits, and/or borrow more from their banks). If the public attempted to shift trillions in cash into housing, stocks, gold, or other currencies, the consequences would likely be seen in sharply rising prices and higher inflation. Moreover, higher inflation would almost certainly lead to higher interest rates, which in turn would exacerbate the Fed’s mark to market problem and possibly accelerate the whole process. And of course, higher interest rates will result in significantly higher borrowing costs to Treasury, although this will be mitigated to some extent by Treasury's efforts to extend the average maturity of its borrowings.

The Fed reasons that it could deal with declining risk aversion by selling bonds (i.e., reducing bank reserves), not reinvesting principal, and by raising the rate it pays on bank reserves. But it’s not hard to see how things could get out of control: higher rates on bank reserves would likely accelerate the rise in market yields and the mark to market losses on the Fed’s bond holdings, at the same time as its spread eroded. In the meantime, the more bank reserves the Fed creates, the harder it will be to avoid an unhappy outcome.

It’s ironic that the Fed is trying, with QE4, to accomplish the very thing that could be its own undoing. Trying, that is, to encourage more confidence, more lending, more borrowing, more investment, and higher prices for risk assets.

It’s no wonder that the market remains so risk-averse, since this is hardly a comforting position we're in. For now, that is probably a good thing. But in the wake of the election results and the Fed's latest decision, I am less optimistic today than I have been for several years.

Of course there are things for which the C. does not provide.  Our FF, in their (divinely inspired) wisdom wrote it that way.  The point, as I understand Scalia to make it, is that the text is to be strictly constructed.

MOBY BEN, OR, THE WASHINGTON SUPER-WHALE: HEDGE FUNDIES, THE FEDERAL RESERVE, AND BERNANKE-HATRED
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/05/the-washington-super-whale-hedge-fundies-the-federal-reserve-and-bernanke-hatred.html
 
In February 2012, a number of hedge fund traders noted one particular index--CDX IG 9--that seemed to be underpriced. It seemed to be cheaper to buy credit default protection on the 125 companies that made the index by buying the index than by buying protection on the 125 companies one by one. This was an obvious short-term moneymaking opportunity: Buy the index, sell its component short, in short order either the index will rise or the components will fall in value, and then you will be able to quickly close out your position with a large profit.
But February passed, and March passed, and April rolled in, and the gap between the price of CDX IG 9 and what the hedge fund traders thought it should be grew. And their bosses asked them questions, like: "Shouldn't this trade have converged by now?" "Have you missed something?" "How much longer do you want to tie up our risk-bearing capacity here?" "Isn't it time to liquidate--albeit at a loss?"
So the hedge fund traders began asking who their counterparty was. It seemed that they all had the same counterparty. And so they began calling their counterparty "the London Whale". They kept buying. And the London Whale kept selling. And so they had no opportunity to even begin to liquidate their positions and their mark-to-market losses grew, and the risk they had exposed their firms to grew.
So they got annoyed.
And they went public, hoping that they could induce the bosses of the London Whale to force him to unwind his possession, in which case they would profit immensely not just when the value of CDX IG 9 returned to its fundamental but by price pressure as the London Whale had to find people to transact with. And so we had 'London Whale' Rattles Debt Market, and similar stories
The London Whale was Bruno Iksil. He had been losing, and rolling double or nothing, and losing again for months. His boss, Ina Drew, took a look at his positions. They found they had a choice: they could hold the portfolio and thus go all-in, or they could fold. They could hold CDX IG 9 until maturity--make a fortune if a fewer-than-expected number of its 125 companies went bankrupt, and lose J.P. Morgan Chase entirely to bankruptcy if more did. Or they could take their $6 billion loss and go home. They could either take their losses, or sing "Luck, Be a Lady Tonight!" and bet J.P. Morgan Chase on a single crapshoot. After all, what could they do if the bet went wrong and they had to eat losses at maturity? J.P. Morgan Chase couldn't print money. So Drew stood Iksil down, and the hedge fund traders had their happy ending.
 
In late 2008, the Treasury bond went haywire. The interest rate on the Ten Year Nominal Treasury bond fell to 2.1% in the panic--clearly overpriced. In the late 1990s with the debt-to-annual-GDP ratio on the decline the Treasury bond had traded between 5% and 7%. In the 2000s with a weak economy the Treasury bond had traded between 4% and 5%. With the Federal debt exploding even faster than it had around 1990, it seemed to hedge fund traders very clear that the long-term fundamental value of the Ten-Year Treasury bond probably carried an interest rate of 7%, or more--and was at the very least more than 5%. So smart hedge fund traders shorted Treasuries, and waited for the Treasury Bond to return to its fundamental value.
And they ran into the widowmaker.
 
So they scrambled around, wondering: "Why did the interest rate on the Ten-Year Treasury peak at 4%? And why has it gone down since then? And why won't it go back to its 5%-7% fundamental." And they looked around. And they found Ben Bernanke:
 
The Washington Super-Whale.
He had printed-up reserve deposits, and used them to buy Treasury Bonds, and in so doing, they thought, had pushed the price of Treasuries up well beyond their fundamentals. Yet rather than easing off, taking his lumps, and letting the market "clear" he kept buying and buying and buying and buying, leaving the hedge fund traders with larger and larger and larger short positions in Treasuries that had to be carried at a loss. And every year that they carry those positions is a -2% times the size of the long leg negative entry in their cash flow.
Bruno Iksil, they thought, had been pulled up short by his boss Ina Drew's unwillingness to bet the firm and risk bankruptcy. Ben Bernanke, they thought, ought to have been pulled up short by his regard for financial stability--by his promise to keep inflation at its target, for the counterpart to J.P. Morgan Chase's bankruptcy and liquidation would be the national bankruptcy that is another episode of inflation like the 1970s. But Ben Bernanke wasn't pulled up short by the risk of inflation. He had no supervising CEO. And he dominated the Federal Open Market Committee.
But what Bernanke was doing, they thought, was as unprofessional as it would have been for Ina Drew to tell Bruno Iksil: "You turn out to have made a large directional bet that we can sell unhedged protection and profit? Let's see if you are right: let it ride!"
And so they went public with the Washington Super-Whale, as they had gone public with the London Whale. Perhaps somewhere out there was an equivalent of Jamie Dimon who could tell Bernanke that it was time to unwind the Federal Reserve's balance sheet now? Jeremy Stein, perhaps?
From my perspective, of course, the hedge fundies' analogy between the London Whale and the Washington Super-Whale is all wrong--the hedge fundies are thinking partial-equilibrium when they should be thinking general equilibrium. CDX IG 9 has a well-defined fundamental value: the payouts should each of the 125 companies go bankrupt times the chance that they will. What Bruno Iksil does does not affect that fundamental value. He can bet, and drive the price, but he cannot change the fundamental.
But the Washington Super-Whale is different.
In a healthy economy, the Ten-Year Treasury Bond does have a well-defined fundamental. When the economy is healthy enough that pricing power reverts to workers and keeping inflation from rising is job #1 for the Federal Reserve, the level of the Federal Funds rate now and in the future is pinned down by the requirement to hit the inflation target. And the fundamental of the Ten-Year Treasury Bond is then the expected value over the bond's lifetime of the future Federal Funds rate plus the appropriate ex ante duration risk premium.
But when the economy is depressed, like now? When market appetite for short-term cash at a zero interest rate is unlimited, like now? When workers have no pricing power, and so wage inflation is subdued, like now? The Federal Reserve is not J.P. Morgan Chase. It is not a highly-leveraged financial institution that must worry about holding too much duration risk. As Glenn Rudebusch once said:
Our business model here at the Fed is simple: (i) print reserve deposits that cost us 0 (OK. 0.25%/yer), (2) invest them in interest-paying bonds that we then hold to maturity, (3) PROFIT!!
And the more quantitative easing the Fed undertakes and the larger is its balance sheet the larger is the amount of money the Federal Reserve makes on its portfolio, without running any risks--as long as the economy remains depressed.
The Federal Reserve, you see, is unlike J.P. Morgan Chase: the Federal Reserve does print money.
But, the hedge fundies say: "What if the economy recovers and starts to boom? What if inflation shoots up? The Fed could loose $500 billion on its portfolio as it moves to control inflation! Why doesn't that fear that?"
The Fed does not fear that. That is what it is aiming for. The Fed is charged by law with "promot[ing] effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long term interest rates". A full-employment economy is not something to be feared but something to be welcomed. And a $500 billion mark-to-market loss on its current portfolio? The Fed has given $500 billion to the Treasury, as a present, over the past decade. It is not a profit-making private bank. It is a central bank charged with "promot[ing] effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long term interest rates".
"But," the hedgies say, "George Soros! The Bank of England held the pound sterling away from fundamentals in 1992, and George Soros bet against them and they could not maintain the parity and George Soros took them for $2 billion! Why aren't we doing the same?" Ah. But George Soros took $2 billion from the Bank of England because its political masters told it to stand down: "We will not," they said, "defend the ERM pound parity at the price of bringing on a deep recession and mass unemployment." Who do the hedgies imagine are the Fed's political masters who will tell it to shift and adopt policies that will bring on even massier unemployment? Rand Paul?
There is a reason that the trade of shorting the bonds of a sovereign issuer of a global reserve currency in a depressed economy is called "the widowmaker".

Truth is a defense.  Let the Truth be determined!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/10/muslim-group-sues-ban-christian-action-network-boo/

OTOH if one does not want change from the strict construction of the Constitution, what is one to do?

Why are the Jews So Powerful?
Posted on May 6, 2013 by alaiwah
By Farrukh Saleem
The writer is the Pakistani Executive Director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank established in 2007, and son in law of Khalilur Rehman of the Jang Group.
There are only 14 million Jews in the world:
seven million in the Americas
five million in Asia
two million in Europe
100,000 in Africa .
For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims.
Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together.
Ever wondered why?
Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish.
Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine’s ’Person of the Century’, was a Jew.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew.
So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman.
Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity:
Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle.
Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine.
Albert Sabin developed the improved live polio vaccine.
Gertrude Elion gave us a leukemia fighting drug.
Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B.
Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis.
Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.
Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.
Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology.
Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy.
Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill.
George Wald won a Nobel for our understanding of the human eye.
Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology.
Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.
Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion
Muslims (other than Peace Prizes).
Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip.
Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor;
Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable;
Charles Adler, traffic lights;
Benno Strauss, Stainless steel;
Isador Kisee, sound movies;
Emile Berliner, telephone microphone;
Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.
Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include:
Ralph Lauren (Polo),
Levis Strauss (Levi’s Jeans),
Howard Schultz (Starbuck’s) ,
Sergey Brin (Google),
Michael Dell (Dell Computers),
Larry Ellison (Oracle),
Donna Karan (DKNY),
Irv Robbins (Baskins & Robbins) and
Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).
Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (Fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman (US Senator), Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Casper Weinberger (American secretary of defense), Maxim Litvinov ( USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal ( Singapore ‘s first chief minister), Issac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia ), Benjamin
Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Barry Goldwater (US Senator), Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal ), John Deutsch (CIA director), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home
secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria ) and Robert Rubin (American secretary of treasury).
In the media, famous Jews include:
Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyveld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and Max Frankel (New York Times).
The most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world.
Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.
At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals; Lenny Krayzelburg is a three-time Olympic gold medalist.
Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker (Tennis) are all Jewish.
Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman,
Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, Goldie Hawn, Cary Grant, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and
Peter Falk are all Jews.
As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew.
Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling ( Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky andHutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The Thief of Baghdad ) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.
So, why are Jews so powerful?
Answer : EDUCATION
Why are Muslims so powerless?
There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa, 44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas . Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are 100 Muslims.
 Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless?
Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around
500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims.
The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407.
In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ , and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.
As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian-majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent.
A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent.
Some 98 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same.
Around 40 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same.
Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million.
In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs. (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million).
The Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.
Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge!
Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society.
In Pakistan , there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.
Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.
Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan ‘s export of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent, while Singapore is at 58 per cent.
Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless?
…..Because we aren’t producing knowledge,
…..Because we aren’t diffusing knowledge.,
…..Because we aren’t applying knowledge.
And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.
Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion.
America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).
Oil rich Saudi Arabia , UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion.
….. (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).
All we do is shout to Allah the whole day and blame everyone else for our multiple failures!
Muslims are not happy
They’re not happy in Gaza
They’re not happy in Egypt
They’re not happy in Libya
They’re not happy in Morocco
They’re not happy in Iran
They’re not happy in Iraq
They’re not happy in Yemen
They’re not happy in Afghanistan
They’re not happy in Pakistan
They’re not happy in Syria
They’re not happy in Lebanon
So, where are they happy?
They’re happy in Australia
They’re happy in England
They’re happy in France
They’re happy in Italy
They’re happy in Germany
They’re happy in Sweden
They’re happy in the USA & Canada
They’re happy in Norway
They’re happy in almost every country that is not Islamic!
And who do they blame?
Not Islam…
Not their leadership…
Not themselves…
THEY BLAME THE COUNTRIES THEY ARE HAPPY IN
And they want to change the countries they’re happy in, to be like the countries they came from, where they were unhappy.
Try to find logic in that!
Jeff Foxworthy on Muslims:
1. If You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to liquor. You are a Muslim
2. If You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can’t afford shoes. You are a Muslim
3. If You have more wives than teeth. You are a Muslim
4. If You wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon unclean. You are a Muslim.
5. If You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide. You are a Muslim
6. If You can’t think of anyone you haven’t declared Jihad against.
You are a Muslim
7. If You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing. You are a Muslim
8. If You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs. You are a Muslim
9. If You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least four. You are a Muslim

 
May 10, 2013

Israel's Man in Damascus
Why Jerusalem Doesn't Want the Assad Regime to Fall
Efraim Halevy

In October 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to inform him that peace was at hand between Israel and Syria. Two weeks later, Rabin was dead, killed by a reactionary Jewish Israeli fanatic; the peace agreement that Rabin referenced died not long thereafter. But Israeli hopes for an eventual agreement with the Assad regime managed to survive. There have been four subsequent attempts by Israeli prime ministers -- one by Ehud Barak, one by Ehud Olmert, and two by Benjamin Netanyahu -- to forge a peace with Syria.

This shared history with the Assad regime is relevant when considering Israel’s strategy toward the ongoing civil war in Syria. Israel’s most significant strategic goal with respect to Syria has always been a stable peace, and that is not something that the current civil war has changed. Israel will intervene in Syria when it deems it necessary; last week’s attacks testify to that resolve. But it is no accident that those strikes were focused solely on the destruction of weapons depots, and that Israel has given no indication of wanting to intervene any further. Jerusalem, ultimately, has little interest in actively hastening the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

Israel knows one important thing about the Assads: for the past 40 years, they have managed to preserve some form of calm along the border. Technically, the two countries have always been at war -- Syria has yet to officially recognize Israel -- but Israel has been able to count on the governments of Hafez and Bashar Assad to enforce the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974, in which both sides agreed to a cease-fire in the Golan Heights, the disputed vantage point along their shared border. Indeed, even when Israeli and Syrian forces were briefly locked in fierce fighting in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war, the border remained quiet.

Israel does not feel as confident, though, about the parties to the current conflict, and with good reason. On the one hand, there are the rebel forces, some of whom are increasingly under the sway of al Qaeda. On the other, there are the Syrian government’s military forces, which are still under Assad’s command, but are ever more dependent on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah, which is also Iranian-sponsored. Iran is the only outside state with boots on the ground in Syria, and although it is supporting Assad, it is also pressuring his government to more closely serve Iran’s goals -- including by allowing the passage of advanced arms from Syria into southern Lebanon. The recent visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Salehi to Damascus, during which he announced that Iran would not allow Assad to fall under any circumstances, further underscored the depth of Iran’s involvement in the fighting. It is entirely conceivable, in other words, that a post-Assad regime in Syria would be explicitly pro–al Qaeda or even more openly pro-Iran. Either result would be unacceptable to Israel.

Of course, an extended civil war in Syria does not serve Israel’s interests either. The ongoing chaos is attracting Islamists from elsewhere in the region, and threatening to destabilize Israel’s entire neighborhood, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. It could also cause Assad to lose control of -- or decide to rely more on -- his stockpile of chemical weapons.

Even though these problems have a direct impact on Israel, the Israeli government believes that it should deal with them in a way that does not force it to become a kingmaker over Assad’s fate. Instead, it would prefer to maintain neutrality in Syria's civil war. Israel does not want to tempt Assad to target Israel with his missile stockpile -- nor does it want to alienate the Alawite community that will remain on Israel’s border regardless of the outcome of Syria’s war.

Last week’s attacks were a case in point. Israel did not hesitate to order air strikes when it had intelligence that arms were going to be funneled from Syria to Hezbollah. Although Israel took care not to assume official responsibility for the specific attack, Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon publicly stated that Israel’s policy was to prevent the passage of strategic weaponry from Syria to Lebanon. But parallel with that messaging, Israel also made overt and covert efforts to communicate to Assad that Jerusalem was determined to remain neutral in Syria’s civil war. The fact that those messages were received in Damascus was reflected in the relatively restrained response from the Assad regime: a mid-level Foreign Ministry official offered a public denouncement of Israel -- and even then the Syrian government offered only a vague promise of reprisal, vowing to respond at a time and in a manner of its choosing.

As brutal as the Syrian war has become, Israel believes that another international crisis is even more urgent: Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear program. Jerusalem has long believed that mid-2013 would be an hour of decision in its dealings with Iran. In the interim, Israel wants to focus its own finite resources on that crisis -- and it would prefer that the rest of the world does the same.

That is not to say that Israel will make efforts to actively support Assad; like most other countries, Israel believes that it is only a matter of time until the Syrian leader is forced from power. But a country of Israel’s size needs to prioritize its foreign policy goals, and Jerusalem does not feel like helping shape an adequate alternative to Assad is in its interest or within its capacity. It will leave that task to others. Indeed, Israel has welcomed the initiative by Russia and the United States to organize a peace conference aimed at resolving the conflict. In the run-up to the conference, Jerusalem will be sure to remind both Washington and Moscow that they share an interest in preventing a permanent Iranian or jihadist presence on Syrian soil.

In that sense, it is safe to say that Assad is not the only recipient of covert communications from Israel. That leaves two questions -- when the White House will decide what its own policy will be, and how it will implement it.


Efraim Halevy served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.

 MONSON, Calif. — Laura Garcia was halfway through the breakfast dishes when the spigot went dry. The small white tank beneath the sink that purified her undrinkable water had run out. Still, as annoying as that was, it was an improvement over the days before Ms. Garcia got her water filter, when she had to do her dishes using water from five-gallon containers she bought at a local store.

Ms. Garcia lives in Monson, Calif. Not being a town, it lacks legal status to apply for federal aid for help with its water woes.

Ms. Garcia’s well water, like that of her neighbors, is laced with excessive nitrates, a pollutant associated with agriculture, septic systems and some soils. Five years ago, this small community of 49 homes near the southern end of the Central Valley took its place on California’s priority list of places in need of clean tap water.

Today the community is still stuck on that list, with no federal help in sight.

Monson’s situation has parallels in places around the country, large and small, seeking federal funds under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Environmental Protection Agency distributes these funds to state agencies that are supposed to identify problems and underwrite solutions. By the E.P.A.’s calculations, no state has been as inept in distributing the money as California.

The state’s most recent priority list contained 4,925 applications. Some have been on the list for a dozen years. Some have been abandoned by the original applicants. Some are getting the federal funds quickly; others are in limbo. Of $1.5 billion in federal money sent to California and cycled through a revolving fund, $455 million lay fallow earlier this year while the priority list grew.

Monson, an unincorporated town in Tulare County, has a particular bureaucratic challenge. The community has no legal status, so it cannot apply on its own. Yet other entities, like Tulare County, which has offered to add pipelines to send clean water down the road to Monson from the town of Sultana’s water system, have only recently been empowered to apply on Monson’s behalf.

Local philanthropy, in the form of a Tulare County Rotary initiative, has tried to help, donating filters like the one under Ms. Garcia’s sink. These are welcome, Ms. Garcia said, speaking through an interpreter. But, she added, “That’s not a permanent solution.”

Since this cluster of 118 people does not qualify as a town, a water district or anything else that the California Department of Public Health recognizes as a valid applicant, another group must act on its behalf.

Monson is hardly alone. According to Jared Blumenfeld, the regional administrator of the E.P.A., nearly a quarter of all the small water systems in California are in the Central Valley. One-quarter of these dispense water that fails to meet all of the E.P.A’s health requirements.

To fix the problems, however, requires access to engineering and financial management resources beyond the reach of the needy communities, Mr. Blumenfeld said. “We require the state to be sure the people they fund have managerial, financial and administrative capacity to deal” with their water issues.

Though there is hope that Tulare County will be able to get the grant for Monson, he said, “some people, smart people, are trying to solve these problems and feeling frustrated.”

Mr. Blumenfeld himself was frustrated enough to issue a public rebuke to California last month. In a letter to Ron Chapman, the director of the state’s Public Health Department, he wrote, “Many of California’s critical drinking-water infrastructure needs remain unmet.”

He added: “California needs $39 billion in capital improvements through 2026 for water systems to continue to provide safe drinking water to the public. Given this tremendous need, it is crucial that California fully utilize” the revolving fund that is the repository for the federal aid, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in loan repayments from local water systems. The state was given 60 days to report how it was going to fix the internal accounting problems and get money out.

Does Monson’s long wait reflect a larger pattern of undistributed funds in small communities? In a written response, the spokeswoman for the California Department of Public Health, Anita Gore, replied, “Small water systems often lack the technical expertise and funding to prepare funding applications, hire consultants to get their projects ‘shovel-ready’ and to make them happen.”

She added that the state “has found that these systems require greater assistance than larger water systems, and is working to simplify its procedures and provide more technical assistance.”

More than 800 of the applicants on the state priority list represent communities of fewer than 100 people.

Maria Herrera, who works for the Community Water Center, a local nonprofit, said “the process for Monson to secure funding to solve its drinking water challenges has had many false starts and roadblocks.” She added that the difficulty in satisfying the state “has delayed Monson’s ability to get clean drinking water and forced residents to live without safe drinking water.”

At the moment, Tulare County is planning on Monson’s behalf, and has suggested alternatives, including that pipeline from Sultana.

Britt Fussel, the public works director in Tulare County, said he also hoped to use grant money not just to study different options but also to have one ready to go. “It’s easy to find money for shovel-ready projects; it’s hard to find money for planning,” he said.

This approach, too, was rejected. “I’m in the process of modifying the scope of work,” Mr. Fussel said.

The public health spokeswoman, Ms. Gore, said the state was working closely with the county to expedite things. She wrote: “Tulare County submitted an application on behalf of the unincorporated community of Monson in early 2012. We anticipate the planning project will be completed in mid-2014. Typically, construction projects run about three years to completion, but that depends on what options are identified in the planning study.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/american-professor-who-hates-america-stabbed-in-cairo-by-muslim-who-also-hates-america/

American Professor Who Hates America Stabbed in Cairo by Muslim Who Also Hates America
May 10, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield Comments (89)

Sometimes poetic justice is very poetic. Other times it’s ironic. And sometimes it’s a teachable moment about the folly of appeasement.

Not that Dr. Christopher Stone will have learned anything from his experience. Leftist academics are not very educable. Not even when their Muslim teachers are stabbing them in the neck. (via Debbie Schlussel)

    A man stabbed in the neck near the US Embassy in Cairo on Thursday has been identified as Chris Stone, an American academic. Stone is associate professor of Arabic and head of the Arabic Programme at City University.

    Lebanese political science professor Asaad Abu Khalil described Stone via Facebook as a “model academic and a man who has dealt with Arabs and their causes with extreme respect, sensitivity, and support.” Stone is a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and writes frequently against Zionism, Khalil added.

    According to Al-Ahram, Stone told prosecutors the attack took place while he was on his way to the US Embassy to finish some paperwork for his wife. A young man enquired about his nationality and stabbed him in the neck after he said he was American.

Just in case there was any doubt whatsoever about the motive, Mahmoud Badr, the stabber, who has a bachelor’s degree in commerce, clarified his motive…

    The man who stabbed an American in Cairo on Thursday says he was motivated by a hatred of the United States.

Ironically, hating the United States was something that Mahmoud had in common with Christopher. When invited to a seven year old’s Israel themed birthday party, Stone declined by asserting that he didn’t just hate Israel… he also hated America, writing…

    “If she had invited me to a party celebrating the US I suspect my response would have been the same. This is not ONLY because of the odious behavior of the US and Israeli governments, but also because of the destruction wrought in the name of nationalism in general.”

So presumably Christopher Stone didn’t do Fourth of July parties. He did however sign a petition demanding that the NYPD commissioner step down for fighting Muslim terrorism. And wrote angry letters to the paper about the Zionist Entity.

    Gaza is a virtual prison, and the West Bank is on its way to being chopped up into apartheid-like cantons…

    Mr. Morris says the Iranian president’s denial of the existence of homosexuality in Iran ”underscore his irrationality.” State denial of facts was not invented by Iran. Does not Israel’s denial of its own state terrorism underscore its irrationality?

Speaking of irrationality, Stone imagined that he could parade around a newly Islamist Egypt protected only by his hatred of the Great and Little Satan.

He was mistaken.

Muslim violence doesn’t just hurt the “bad” Americans who watch 4th of July fireworks and like the Constitution. It also hurts good Americans who teach Arabic and hate America.

Back in the day, Muslims had special clothing for Dhimmis to wear to signify their acceptance of second class status under Islamic supremacism. Stone though that his Keffiyah did the trick. Next time he’ll know better.

Op-Ed Contributor
Pakistan’s Tyrannical Majority
By MANAN AHMED ASIF
Published: May 10, 2013


JUST after the stroke of midnight on Aug. 14, 1947, the Peshawar broadcast station of All India Radio crackled to life: “This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service.” Next came the words of the Urdu-language poet Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi: “Pakistan bananay walay, Pakistan Mubarak” — “Oh, maker of Pakistan, congratulations on Pakistan.”


On Saturday, Pakistanis will head to the polls to choose a new government; for the first time in 66 years, a democratically elected administration has completed its term. Given Pakistan’s tumultuous past, this is an impressive achievement, but it should not prevent citizens from asking the candidates vying for their votes: what kind of Pakistan have you made?

The makers of Pakistan were peasants and laborers. In 1940, they passed a resolution in Lahore to demand a separate homeland for Muslims and an end to British colonial occupation. In 1946, their votes brought a political party, the Muslim League, to power. They chose Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a modernist technocrat, as their leader.

Jinnah asked his party’s legislators to focus on the well-being of the “masses and the poor” and demanded that “every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations.” Men like Muhammad Zafrulla Khan (an Ahmadi diplomat) and Raja Amir Ahmad Khan (a Shiite noble) had worked alongside Jinnah for decades to fulfill this dream of equality.

Yet the birth of Pakistan was not auspicious for minorities. The original claim of Pakistan — religious equality — was the first claim proved false. Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, though he became the first foreign minister, was hounded by religious conservatives, who branded him an apostate because of his Ahmadi faith. Ahmadis, followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), consider themselves part of the Muslim tradition but have faced stern resistance from Sunni Muslims, who accused them of following a false prophet.

In 1974, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto passed an amendment to the Pakistani Constitution declaring anyone who did not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet a non-Muslim. And in the 1980s, the military dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq passed punitive laws that defined the practice of the Ahmadi faith as a “blasphemous” criminal offense. Ahmadis are allowed to vote only for parliamentary seats reserved for non-Muslims, effectively disenfranchising them. Since they refuse to declare themselves non-Muslims, they don’t vote.

Shiites have not fared much better. Raja Amir Ahmad left Pakistan, soon after 1947, fearing for the safety of his community. In the last five years, more than 1,000 Shiites, belonging to the Hazara community, have been targeted and killed in the city of Quetta. In February, when 84 Shiites were killed in a bombing attack, Quetta’s Hazaras refused to bury their murdered kin, demanding that the government ensure their safety. The corpses, wrapped in burial shrouds in coffins, were kept on the streets and mourned by thousands. This act of civic protest shook the nation, but it did little to prompt action from the state.

Today, tolerance is under siege from all directions. Even Imran Khan, the sports star turned politician — who enjoys a near-divine status among young, urban Pakistanis — has contributed to the marginalization of minorities. On May 4, he said at a rally that he did not regard Ahmadis as Muslims and would not campaign for their votes. Mr. Khan has based his campaign on a message of “change” reminiscent of President Obama’s in 2008. His statement on Ahmadis was therefore particularly damaging and chilling.

As a candidate marketing himself as a political outsider, he could have opened up a national conversation on equality of citizenship and reached out to all voters, including Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians. Instead he reaffirmed the political exclusion of minorities and legitimized intolerance in the eyes of his millions of idealistic young followers, who quickly echoed his dismissal in online networks.

Over the last five years, hundreds of Ahmadis have been targeted and killed in Pakistan’s cities. In 2010, 94 were killed in a terrorist attack in Lahore, and since then their burial grounds, mosques and homes have been under assault. There has been no response from the government, which still refuses to grant them equal status as citizens of Pakistan. Christian communities have also been targeted, and prominent Christian leaders, like Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister of minorities, have been assassinated. While the state has done little to punish these acts, various militant organizations have brazenly claimed credit for them.

The candidates campaigning in this election, rather than arguing for the rights of all Pakistanis, have further marginalized religious minorities and given license to those who attack them.

Despite the rise of satellite television and online media that have allowed mass participation in politics outside of old patronage networks, a new form of majoritarian tyranny has taken hold. It is built on the classic anxieties of the rising middle class: the fear of the other, the conspirator among us.

Today, the verses of another poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who was imprisoned and exiled by Pakistan’s military dictators, seem more appropriate: “Chalay chalo kay woh manzil abhi nahin aaye” — “Keep on walking, for we are not at the destination yet.”

Manan Ahmed Asif, an assistant professor of history at Columbia, is the author of “Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination.”

A remarkable clip about Mormon colonies in Chihuahau fighting the narcos and their connections to Mitt Romney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIyaIHsJbc


http://youtu.be/8XiSnCt9fDc
 

I was thinking a bit about my post that Geraldo has finally discovered the gun running meme some seven months after I was posting about it here.

It dawned on me that when Geraldo reports that Team Obama told Romney that there was a secret gun running operation that needed to be kept secret and that this is why Romney did not pursue Benghazi that this is really fg significant.

If there was a gun running operation-- as I suspect there was-- then it is not clear to me what the logic is that it would be revealed by acknowledging who it was that attacked us.

Continuing this line of thought, then does it not follow that Team Obama lied to Romney in the name of national security to dupe him into not pursuing this line of attack?

Do I have this right?

Would love to have Buzwardo's input on this in particular , , ,

===============================

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
Temperature Rising


Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.

China is now the largest emitter, but Americans have been consuming fossil fuels extensively for far longer, and experts say the United States is more responsible than any other nation for the high level.

The new measurement came from analyzers atop Mauna Loa, the volcano on the big island of Hawaii that has long been ground zero for monitoring the worldwide trend on carbon dioxide, or CO2. Devices there sample clean, crisp air that has blown thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, producing a record of rising carbon dioxide levels that has been closely tracked for half a century.

Carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million was first seen in the Arctic last year, and had also spiked above that level in hourly readings at Mauna Loa.

But the average reading for an entire day surpassed that level at Mauna Loa for the first time in the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday. The two monitoring programs use slightly different protocols; NOAA reported an average for the period of 400.03 parts per million, while Scripps reported 400.08.

Carbon dioxide rises and falls on a seasonal cycle, and the level will dip below 400 this summer as leaf growth in the Northern Hemisphere pulls about 10 billion tons of carbon out of the air. But experts say that will be a brief reprieve — the moment is approaching when no measurement of the ambient air anywhere on earth, in any season, will produce a reading below 400.

“It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University.

From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 parts per million in the depths of ice ages to about 280 during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperatures and CO2 levels are tightly linked.

For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.

Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.

Experts fear that humanity may be precipitating a return to such conditions — except this time, billions of people are in harm’s way.

“It takes a long time to melt ice, but we’re doing it,” Dr. Keeling said. “It’s scary.”

Dr. Keeling’s father, Charles David Keeling, began carbon dioxide measurements on Mauna Loa and at other locations in the late 1950s. The elder Dr. Keeling found a level in the air then of about 315 parts per million — meaning that if a person had filled a million quart jars with air, about 315 quart jars of carbon dioxide would have been mixed in.

His analysis revealed a relentless, long-term increase superimposed on the seasonal cycle, a trend that was dubbed the Keeling Curve.

Countries have adopted an official target to limit the damage from global warming, with 450 parts per million seen as the maximum level compatible with that goal. “Unless things slow down, we’ll probably get there in well under 25 years,” Ralph Keeling said.

Yet many countries, including China and the United States, have refused to adopt binding national targets. Scientists say that unless far greater efforts are made soon, the goal of limiting the warming will become impossible without severe economic disruption.

“If you start turning the Titanic long before you hit the iceberg, you can go clear without even spilling a drink of a passenger on deck,” said Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. “If you wait until you’re really close, spilling a lot of drinks is the best you can hope for.”

Climate-change contrarians, who have little scientific credibility but are politically influential in Washington, point out that carbon dioxide represents only a tiny fraction of the air — as of Thursday’s reading, exactly 0.04 percent. “The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rather undramatic,” a Republican congressman from California, Dana Rohrabacher, said in a Congressional hearing several years ago.

But climate scientists reject that argument, saying it is like claiming that a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom cannot have much effect. Research shows that even at such low levels, carbon dioxide is potent at trapping heat near the surface of the earth.

“If you’re looking to stave off climate perturbations that I don’t believe our culture is ready to adapt to, then significant reductions in CO2 emissions have to occur right away,” said Mark Pagani, a Yale geochemist who studies climates of the past. “I feel like the time to do something was yesterday.”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-scandal-grows_722032.html


The Benghazi Scandal Grows
The State Department, the CIA, the White House . . .
May 20, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 34 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version​—​produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers​—​was a shadow of the original.
Whistleblowers


The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al Qaeda.

These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence, even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

There was good reason for this conviction. Within 24 hours of the attack, the U.S. government had intercepted communications between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists discussing the attacks in Benghazi. One of the jihadists, a member of Ansar al Sharia, reported to the other that he had participated in the assault on the U.S. diplomatic post. Solid evidence. And there was more. Later that same day, the CIA station chief in Libya had sent a memo back to Washington, reporting that eyewitnesses to the attack said the participants were known jihadists, with ties to al Qaeda.
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Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy​—​al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on.

The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”

In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA.

This candid, real-time assessment from then-CIA director Petraeus offers a glimpse of what many intelligence officials were saying privately as top Obama officials set aside the truth about Benghazi and spun a fanciful tale about a movie that never mattered and a demonstration that never happened.

“The YouTube video was a nonevent in Libya,” said Gregory Hicks, a 22-year veteran diplomat and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the attacks, in testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on May 8. “The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on a consulate . . . no protest.”

So how did Jay Carney, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and others come to sell the country a spurious narrative about a movie and a protest?

There are still more questions than answers. But one previously opaque aspect of the Obama administration’s efforts is becoming somewhat clearer. An email sent to Susan Rice following a key White House meeting where officials coordinated their public story lays out what happened in that meeting and offers more clues about who might have rewritten the talking points.
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The CIA’s talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia.

In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” She did not specify whom she meant by State Department “building leadership.” Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning. The Deputies Committee consists of high-ranking officials at the agencies with responsibility for national security​—​including State, Defense, and the CIA​—​as well as senior White House national security staffers.

The Deputies Committee convened the next morning, Saturday the 15th. Some participants met in person, while others joined via a Secure Video Teleconference System (abbreviated SVTS and pronounced “siv-its”).

The proceedings were summarized in an email to U.N. ambassador Rice shortly after the meeting ended. The subject line read: “SVTS on Movie/Protests/violence.” The name of the sender is redacted, but whoever it was had an email address suggesting a job working for the United States at the United Nations.
Related Stories

According to the email, several officials in the meeting shared the concern of Nuland, who was not part of the deliberations, that the CIA’s talking points might lead to criticism that the State Department had ignored the CIA’s warning about an attack. Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department’s director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Denis McDonough, then a top national security adviser to Obama and now his chief of staff, deferred on Rhodes’s behalf to Sullivan.

The email to Rice reported that Sullivan would work with a small group of individuals from the intelligence community to finalize the talking points on Saturday before sending them on to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which had originated the request for talking points.

The sender of the email spoke with Sullivan after the meeting, reminding him that Rice would be doing the Sunday morning shows and needed to receive the final talking points. Sullivan committed to making sure Rice was updated before the Sunday shows. The sender told Sullivan the name of the staffer (redacted in the email) who would be running Rice’s prep session and encouraged the team to keep Rice in the loop.

At 2:44 p.m., the author of the email to Rice followed up directly with Sullivan, asking for a copy of the talking points to help with Rice’s preparation for TV. Sullivan promised to provide them.

A senior Obama administration official did not challenge the accuracy of the email to Rice, but disputed any implication that Sullivan was responsible for rewriting the talking points. “The CIA circulated revised talking points to the interagency after the Deputies Committee meeting and Jake Sullivan did not comment substantively on those points.”

This official pointed to Jay Carney’s comments this week. “What we said and what remains true to this day is that the intelligence community drafted and redrafted these points.”

But Carney’s claim raises an obvious question: Why would intelligence community officials want to redraft talking points they’d already finalized?

The major substantive changes came Friday evening, after a State Department official expressed concerns about criticism from Republicans, and Saturday morning, following the Deputies Committee meeting, where, according to internal Obama administration emails, officials further revised the talking points.

What’s clear is that the final version did not reflect the views of the top intelligence official on the ground in Benghazi, who had reported days earlier that the assault had been a terrorist attack conducted by jihadists with links to al Qaeda, or the top U.S. diplomat in Libya, Gregory Hicks.
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Hicks testified last week that he was not consulted on the talking points and was surprised when he saw Rice make a case that had little to do with what had happened in Benghazi. “I was stunned,” he said. “My jaw dropped.”

The hearings last week produced fresh details on virtually every aspect of the Benghazi controversy and raised new questions. By the end of some six hours of testimony, several Democrats on the committee had joined their Republican colleagues in calling for more hearings, additional witnesses, and the release of unclassified documents related to the attacks in Benghazi.

On May 9, House speaker John Boehner echoed the calls for those unclassified Benghazi documents to be made public. He had two specific requests. First, Boehner called for the release of an email from Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary for Near East affairs, sent on September 12. Jones wrote to her colleagues to describe a conversation she’d had with Libya’s ambassador to the United States. When the Libyan raised the possibility that loyalists to Muammar Qaddafi might have been involved, Jones corrected him. “When he said his government suspected that former Gadhafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.” Among those copied on the email: Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, and Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff and longtime confidante.

Second, Boehner asked the White House to release the 100 pages of internal administration emails related to the drafting and editing of the talking points. Sources tell The Weekly Standard that House Republicans will subpoena them if the administration does not turn them over voluntarily.


Two weeks ago, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was time to “move on” from Benghazi. More recently, Jay Carney suggested the same thing, explaining that Benghazi had happened “a long time ago.”

But it’s increasingly clear that congressional Republicans, and many Americans, will not move on until the outstanding questions about Benghazi are answered.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

Correction: This piece originally said that Victoria Nuland suggested changes to the talking points because she was concerned about criticism from Republicans in Congress. That's inaccurate. She suggested changes because of concerns from members of Congress.

One of them is cited here:

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/10/

Take the six minutes or so and find out for yourself.  It would take me longer than that to write it up 

At the moment they are blaming it on low level flunkies , , ,